Title

Video games helping you?

Problem Scenario

To see if playing video games could affect reaction time positively which could help surgeons research the ability of robotic surgery and how they can prepare their doctors and surgeons.

Broad Question

Do video games affect your motor skills.

Specific Question

Do video games affect your reaction time.

Hypothesis

I think that video games will affect your reaction time positively.

Graph of Hypothesis

Variables

Independent Variable:

Video game.

Dependent Variable:

Reactions.

Variables That Need To Be Controlled:

Reaction test, Height of which ruler is dropped.

Vocabulary List That Needs Explanation

Subject- The person playing the video game and doing the reaction test.
Reaction- How fast someone can adjust to a situation.

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General Plan

I am taking students that are willing to take part and they will perform a reaction test and will then later play a set video game for a period of two minutes then will stop and take the reaction test again and average the two scores with every subject and find out whether or not video games affect reaction time.

Potential Problems And Solutions

The ruler would not be dropped at the same height each time, have a set height each time and keep it there before dropped.
Hand would be too close to ruler when dropped and changing results, have a set height each time to keep the hand and obtain it from raising or dropping.

Safety Or Environmental Concerns

Ruler may cut subjects hand, buy non-metal edged ruler would be a substantial choice. The ruler might hit the subjects foot if they didn't catch it, I would have the subject keep its feet away from the way of the ruler is what I would do to fix that.

Experimental Design

What is your experimental unit?

Video Games.

Number Of Trials:

20

Number Of Subjects In Each trial:

2

Number of Observations:

40

When data will be collected

2/13

Where will data be collected?:

Mr. Biche's room

Resources and Budget Table

Item	Number needed	Where I will get this	Cost
Poster Board	1	Staples	$5.00
Ruler	1	Home	$0.00
Video game	1	Laptop/ WI-FI	$0.00

Detailed Procedure

1. Get subjects
2. Find a suitable video game for subjects to play
3. Have the subject do reaction test
4. Record results
5. Have subject play video game for 2 minutes
6. Have subject do reaction test again
7. Record results
8. Repeat with 10 more subjects

Diagram

Photo List

The game, a subject, subject doing reaction test.

Time Line

Procedure, time line, photo list complete -2/1
Begin experiment -2/4
Experiments done -3/1
Analysis -3/7
Discussion/Background -3/15
Posters complete 3/22
KMS fair -3/29

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Data Table

Trial		With video Games			Without Video Games
1
2
3

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Data Analysis

All Raw Data

Trial	With Video Games	Without Video Games
1	1,1	7,3
2	6,2	7,6
3	16,20	9,8
4	18,11	24,25
5	14,8	11,18
6	1,3	8,2
7	7,2	15,2
8	1,3	5,7
9	4,7	6,7
10	5,3	9,15
11	2,2	2,8
12	2,2	4,2
13	1,4	16,5
14	4,1	13,6
15	6,14	14,15
16	3,11	6,5
17	1,1	2,4
18	1,1	2,3
19	7,3	12,9
20	3,2	8,13

Graphs

Photos

Dropping and Catching the ruler The Helicopter Game

Results

When all the data was recorded I realized that the average for people who didn't play the video game, with an average of 9.5 cm,was much Higher than the average of people who did play video games who had an average of 5 cm. This shows that the people who played the video game for two minutes before taking the reaction test did substantially better than the people who did not play the video game.

Conclusion

I hypothesised that people would have a faster reaction time after playing video games than before. I accept my hypothesis because the average for people who did play the video game had an average of 5 cm. compared to a 9.5 cm. average for the people who did not play the video game before taking the reaction test.

Discussion

In this experiment I found that people who played video games did much better than people who didn't. There was little to no pattern in the data for the people had varied reaction time but they all increased in reaction time after the video games. The experiment could be improved by making the spot where the ruler was dropped and where the hand was held more accurate each time. The only problems I had in this experiment was that the subject wouldn't always keep his/her hand where it was supposed to be they would keep raising their hand, so I kept having to correcting them.

Benefit to Community and/or Science

Like in the background research this could help benefit the study of robotic surgery so this could help doctors and researchers determine how the doctors could prepare for robotic surgery in the future and could unlock more medical studied further into the future.

Background Research

Recently surgeons have been researching robotic surgery with robotic arms and controllers. They had medical school students and average video game players. The video game players actually did noticeably better than the medical school students in the robotic surgery simulation. This is a sign of hand-eye coordination and reaction time being substantially better in average video game players than trained medical students. After this test was finished they reccomended doctors to play about 1 hour of video games a day to keep their hand-eye coordination and reaction time up. This intrigued me because I am a boy who does love my video games but this also is a really cool opportunity to explore into something so I decided to look more into this and I even found that in the E.O.D. (explosives ordinance disposal) to control the explosive rigged robots they use a classic Xbox controller because of their young recruits. So I decided to test this.
References

Abstract

The reason I performed this experiment is because I wanted to test if Video games would effect reaction time. So what I did in this experiment was take a subject and have them take a reaction test by dropping a ruler from a set height and have them catch it as soon as possible and record the results. I would then have the subject play the Helicopter Game for two minutes. This is a game that will test reaction by controlling a helicopter by clicking and holding to go up and releasing the mouse to go down and they would have to avoid touching the roof and bottom while avoiding obstacles. Then they would take the test again and I'd record the results. I'd hoped that the video games would positively affect the reaction time of my subjects.